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DARPA Working on Spidey Sense for Soldiers
anti-human 1 writes to tell us Wired is reporting that DARPA is developing a new optics system to help soldiers identify threats earlier. "The most far-reaching component of the binocs has nothing to do with the optics: it's Darpa's aspirations to integrate EEG electrodes that monitor the wearer's neural signals, cueing soldiers to recognize targets faster than the unaided brain could on its own. The idea is that EEG can spot 'neural signatures' for target detection before the conscious mind becomes aware of a potential threat or target. [...] In other words, like Spiderman's 'spider sense', a soldier could be alerted to danger that his or her brain had sensed, but not yet had time to process."
Now if I could just get this web shooter to work.....
~Vexed and loving it!
I was reading a military close quarters combat manual and they made reference to a "sixth sense". It stated explicitly NOT to look directly at the enemy before you walk up to them and kill them silently one way or another. You are supposed to look at the ground by their feet and not think about them before you "off" them. It is amazing to me how many people do not believe that we have a sixth sense, the ability to know someone is looking at you even though they are not in your field of vision. I have yet to see science explain this...
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
I get the same effect from too much coffee.
"My spider sense is tingling, anyone call for a webslinger?"
Sorry for the obligatory Simpsons quote.
...but then again, I'm crazy Dolph Lundgren.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
So if I understand it right from the article, our brain is constantly sending out danger signals that we ignore. This technology will then sense those danger signals and beep or flash red or something? So now we have another danger signal that needs to follow all the same routing. Does this cause a feedback loop? If there is something dangerous enough that our brain can recognize it would we not maybe notice it before the machine reading our brain? It sounds like we have a lot of these danger signals. Is every piece of trash blowing by in our peripheral vision going to set this thing off?
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Drink deeply or not at all."
Sorry for the obligatory Simpsons quote.
No problem, try this one on for size:
"I, for one, welcome our new arachnid overlords."
The web-shooter goes in your wrist, not your
{no....I just can't bring myself to finish that one.....}
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Anyone who has read Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan will recognise this. In the book, cloned bodies have improved reflexes, reaction times, even better responses to pain. Fall over a ledge, your augmented brain has a reflex action to grab something, which is faster and more accurate than normal.
In the book, ordinary people with enough money can get the tech. If you meet someone who has better tech than you, they can almost certainly take you down with little effort. Every move you make, they see first and move faster to counter.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
For the life of me I can't find the article but there was a recent publication about how soldiers don't like all this high-tech gear. And I can imagine why. Outside of body armor (and soldiers say there's such a thing as too much) and good communication a lot of this junk is over-hyped whiteboard warrior stuff that gobbles up billions of dollars of DoD R&D.
Within the article:
"It's unclear what the final system will look like." but "Darpa says it expects to have prototypes in the hands of soldiers in three years."
Sure. It's like the Popular Science covers of the 1960s "Flying cars tomorrow! Pick your model today!"
If we really want to helps soldiers brains, help them come back from a bogus war with fewer instances of PTSD and other psychological damage.
CommentBot 0.7a running with args "-module irritate,disagree -target random"
and give them some common sense
Also called "Dysfunction of Sensory Integration". It's a neurological condition where the brain has difficulty putting certain sensory signals "in the background". Say, for example, you put on a wristwatch this morning. Eventually your brain goes "OK...wrist watch...left arm...I get it", and you stop becomming constantly aware of the watch. You know it's there, the nerves in your arm can still detect it, but the brain pushes it into the background because it does not need to keep reminding you it's there.
A tactile DSI, would always feel like they just put that watch on, it can be quite irritating after a while. Tactile DSIs often do things like cut tags off of thier clothing and take other such steps to minimize the sensory overload they are exposed to.
I'm an auditory DSI, I have a hard time blocking out background noise and often times, it competes with what I should be paying attention to. My work-around is to wear wireless full-coverage headphones that pipe in soft classical music. Thus, I reduce the distractions to a single source that is easy to manage.
These days however, I have an office so I can also just close my door.
Based upon my experience, I say this won't work like they hope it will.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
I've always thought it was simply my peripheral vision, which is very sensitive to movement, seeing their head turn. I often watch people, but don't like being seen watching, so I will often watch people when stopped at a light by just turning my eyes, and not my head. In this case, people never look back unless their eyes are just wandering.
The Code Master
I can't wait for the spidey sense to kill an unarmed civilian. Oh wait, we don't need advanced technology for that.
Haiku for you!
The more of a burden it can be. However, I think that one day we'll see variants of these kinds of enhancements. This just seems like a transitional step to a "wetware" system of some sort. This kinda thing HAS to be a possibility. We've been adapting to the dangers of our existence for quite some time.
you never lose in ure razorblade shoes......Beck-Hotwax
Maybe then he will finally clue into the fact that fewer and fewer Americans support his flawed Iraq policy with each passing week...
http://www.hist.umn.edu/~ruggles/Approval.htm
I can throw as many stones as I wish; my house is made of transparent aluminum.
With this system a user will have the added delay and distration of processing a stimulus that the system provides after the system processes the signals that would have lead to recognition of the threat except for the fact that the user's attention is being diverted to process the stimuls generated by the system.
Wouldn't it be more useful to simply provide better training to enhance the soldiers' awareness and response to instinctual signals?
your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through
Everyone has a sixth sense about making split second decisions. Professional soldiers who've been in combat situations over their life gain subcontious instincts that let them spot things that "don't seem right." But this is experience one gains over time from encountering lots of examples.
t /dp/0316172324
This technology would merely make your subcontious more contious. But it doesn't tell you anything that you don't already know. Green recruits dropped into combat with this technology wouldn't get any use out of it, since they don't have the experience to understand what to look for. And all it would do to senior soldiers is confirm their already itching suspicions.
http://www.amazon.com/Blink-Power-Thinking-Withou
It's an interesting idea, especially for scientific purposes of visualizing what goes through a soldier's mind during combat. You get the possibility of mapping the subcontious in a visual way. But I have a strong feeling this tech will never make it on a practical side.
The soldiers don't even have enough of the existing technology and we are wasting money on spider sensing devices that will cost millions of dollars AFTER being developed. This will never be in the hands of more than a dozen soldiers if the tech makes it that far.
Forget this AND forget the armor they don't have. We don't need enough armored vehicles for a large scale offensive anyway. What we need to preserve what we have. Congress needs to grow some balls and recall the troops by refusing to grant additional funding.
There is no way to alert the brain to something that hasn't been consciously realized yet but flagged unconsciously any faster than the brain would already do it without actually altering the brain. The alert would have to pass through the same or similar processing pathways as the initial sensory input which caused the alert signals that would be measured by an EEG. Even if the EEG and associated external equipment produced results instantaneously it would only get in the way of the brain's natural function.
This could be used for something like automatic targeting where a computer would already have begun targeting (for weapons fire or for detailed radar or optical scanning) something of interest before an operator or pilot knew he/she was interested in it.
All the system will show to poor soldier is that their very ass should not be there in the first place, because brain knows it, the feeling is just suppressed by the training and whatever else reasons to be in the battlefield ;)
/* Wherever you go there you are... */
armour the damn humvees, decent body armour, weapons with less pieces that don't jam.
no one is fooled by 'look at this new shiny jet'...while the soldiers eat cornflakes
the military need to get 'back to basics' less they look stupid.
Articulation of perception is just the last step in a long complex mental process.
Just because you can't explain something in a rational symbolic cognitive socially-accepted linguistic framework doesn't mean you haven't perceived it.
Tools that help enhance and articulate these perceptions would be very useful - especially in war.
On a related note: may I suggest The Science and Art of Tracking.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
When people want to believe in something extraordinary there's no way an experiment, no matter how well performed, will convince them of the contrary. They will always assume the experiment itself was faulty in some way.
It seems that for some people the need to believe in something is so strong it overrides reason.
I would wager that there's no need for a sixth sense to explain this one; it's entirely within the realm of our five normal senses. Even during full REM, your senses are monitoring what's going on around you and information processing is occurring. This is often seen with people who incorporate various sounds into their dreams, such as the ringing of a phone or an alarm clock for an air raid siren in their dream, and so on. Likewise, spouses of frequent snorers can usually just tell their significant other to roll over and even in their subconscious state the subject will obey the command. At least that's what my wife tells me. ;)
I think you're correct in your guess regarding human evolution with regards to threat perception during different states of wakefulness. There would be a significant advantage to being able to process information and correctly identify threats during sleep, and it would most likely be naturally selected for.
If service age kids get their hands on this equipment it could be a disaster for recruiting.
"Danger Danger young Will Robinson! Don't go in there! Try community college first at least!"
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Victory over the existing regime is one thing, achieved a couple years ago.
/.ers:
... there's a long painful period of keeping the would-be dictators, warlords and petty tyrants from making a further mess of thing while the victors proceed to set up a new, effective, and generally moral/decent government to fill the power vacuum.
Filling the resulting power vacuum is something else, still underway.
To use an analogy relevant to
Just because a product has successfully shipped doesn't mean development work is done. Bug fixes, enhancements, documentation, etc. all follow for a prolonged period.
Likewise, successfully removing a tyrranical dictator from power doesn't mean troops can just go home
Pulling out of Iraq now would result in the country collapsing into civil war and prolonged violence; better (for both the citizens and the occupying soldiers) to stay and finish the job right, THEN pull out when a decent self-supporting gov't is in place.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Is sneak up behind someone wearing that rig and pop a paper bag full of air.....
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Affirming my first post. So yeah, I'm not going to hold on to my "foolish" beliefs no matter what people say. I am actually posting research affirming my position that poeple do indeed have a type of 6th sense...
link
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
So... what happened to the sharks with lasers? :)
OK. Number one, your link is broken. Here is a working one
Number two, snopes says that this little tidbit is false.
Number three, snopes says that this bit of misinformation started out in the 50s in a list of common insect misconceptions, and was used in the early 90s in an experiment of fake facts on the internet to show how gullible people are.
Man, you really need that seminar!
The "sixth sense" is your brain absorbing and processing and reacting to inputs which have not been trained enough to result in articulable commentary.
Higher cognitive processes screen out LOTS of material to prevent overloading - that doesn't mean lower cognitive processes aren't getting that material and doing something useful with them. There's a tremendous amount of auditory/visual/etc. stimulus which _does_ have meaning, but which is not rationally considered. You subconciously perceive them, and part of your brain reacts thereto - regardless of whether higher cognitive processes can articulate it better than labelling it a vague "sixth sense".
Even the notable "don't look at your prey, their sixth sense will tip 'em off" thing is likely explained by subtle differences in how you walk, making different sounds, which the prey's baser instincts can differentiate as harmless vs. threatening. Someone walking to you vs. by you will act differently - behavior which in turn can be affected by whether they are looking at you vs. somewhere else.
Go read "The Science and Art of Tracking" by Tom Brown for more insights on this.
It's amazing how little of their environment people pay attention to.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
from Hard-Lovin' Loser:
He's the kind of cowboy got a hot trigger finger
Shoots his boot 'cause he's drawing kind of slow...
'Course you gotta have gray hair (if any) to remember that ditty.
Why build a opticial sensor when there's a perfectly good, free [as in beer], orgainc sensor we can tap in our heads?
Is this the same military that, right now, is testing new headgear for soldiers that shows the position of friendlies 30 seconds later?
Um, yeah, good luck with that "beating the speed of thought" thing...
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
I'm thinking the whole idea of a 6th sense goes along with the idea of quantum mechanics, specifically quantum entanglement.
... there's someone behind you, he's staring at you, and he's really mad - act accordingly".
That's not 6th sense.
That's 6th nonsense.
The "don't look at them" thing is a matter of subtle patterns of sounds, smells, lighting, etc. indicative of someone staring - not "quantum entanglement". You've learned to screen out the perceptions you have of people around you who are not going to interact with you; those who stop nearby for unusual periods, move toward you, emit fight/flight-related pheremones (start excreting stinky sweat), disrupt ambient lighting certain ways, etc. all in manners which match patterns of behavior you subconciously act on but consciously ignore, all add up to lower cognitive functions telling higher reasoning "I don't have time to explain this, but
No need to explain mundane behavior by linking it to exotic fancy-sounding notions. Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's wildly complicated.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Now if the Pentagon would just invent some way to properly treat soldiers injured in our wars, like they say they do at Walter Reed Hospital.
Though I guess first some Republican thinktank will have to invent a way for honoring that commitment to our veterans to be as profitable to Bush cronies as some new battlefield toy that some medieval terrorist can disable for $0.49 and their life.
--
make install -not war
1) Train Yourself in Pakour. Become proficient.
1 14_050114_tv_spider.html
c le=UPI-1-20070416-18110300-bc-britain-hoodie.xml
...err save humanity!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEbYtOEftc0
2) Get a hold of artificial spider silk + convenient dispenser
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0
3) Fashion a pair of Gecko setae gloves, boots and other convenient body areas
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3726
4) Fabricate a Kevlar Spidey suit
http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=Quirks&arti
5) Obtain DARPA Spidey sense
6) Profit!
I remember when I stood in absolute darkness, chest deep in muddy leech & snake infested water trying to remain silent and control my breathing, holding my weapon above my head, my arms screaming for relief while a platoon of NVA quietly crept by (you know they were as freaked out as me). When the last of them was out of earshot, I collapsed and almost drowned.
No "Sixth Sense" warned them that an armed 6'4" American was standing as little as five feet away.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
TFA is interesting but there's a lot else that can be done. I'm skeptical that a soldier would not get very tired in this setup, being wired into it, and that he could do better than a robotic unit could at this recognition of dim distant moving targets.
There were some posts about a "sixth sense" i.e. electromagnetic or something spooky. Maybe so, maybe we can sense quantum phenomena even but most likely this is an illusion that is based on a "background thread" circuit that is triggered by matching combinations of perceptions that may be below conscious levels.
These could include reflection (whites of the eyes), how a figure or features in the visual field move on short time scales, air currents and static electricity conducted by them (which is electromagnetic of course and you can feel it), scent / pheromones, all kinds of audible and vibratory cues including heartbeats of people around you, the list goes on. Possibly I bet we feel danger also when we are in an environment that is too noisy to pick up on these things, and we may feel stress when higher priorities are assigned to some combinations. For example I think you'd be jumpier if you detected someone weaving out of the corner of your eye when a train is rushing past the platform in front of you.
That said, I don't think I like the idea of soldiers killing people based on subsconscious cues. That's really bad to understate it. They would do much better to call Jaron Lanier who is working on synthetic senses. I read a very cool article about an experiment into synthesizing new senses (and I think it was Lanier but I could be wrong). By wearing a buzzer around your waist 24 hrs a day that buzzes depending on the direction of North, you actually can rewire your brain to get not only a strong sense of direction and never get lost, but also build an internal map of a city in your head based on it. There is a feeling of loss apparently when you stop.
Soldiers should get a version of this that can sense frequencies of sound, electromagnetic phenomena, subtle rhythmical signatures, and maybe satellite data too. A terahertz or audio based system like this would indeed create a "spidey sense" that is a new, real, synthesized sense, and my guess is TFA is while not totally a lie at least a bit of bluster to shield the other research they're doing. Very likely the low hanging fruit does not require expensive hardware, which is bad news for unequipped forces especially in urban environments.
The reason you don't look at the person before you kill them, in any manner, is because it's easier to kill a humanoid-shaped thing than a human being whom you've looked in the eyes. It's a very brutal feeling the first time you kill someone. You want it to get easier, because you know you'll have to do it again, but if it gets easier, what does that make you? Being a modern soldier or Marine is no picnic.
::: Slashdot 'xcutive summary :::
Fishes Have Ears.
(like our ears, we both have organs exquisitely sensitive to pressure waves)
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
Men around the world are wishing this application could be used in the home to avoid getting caught while rubbing one out.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
I think this will cause more friendly fire accidents.....
Money is the root of all evil?
Anyway the "sixth sense" could tie into quantum mechanics? By observing an animate object you intend to destroy, that object's state is changed?
Sorry, LOST is on tonight. I expect jumps from shaky science to Einsteinian physics to be explained on message boards on Wednesdays.
It's obvious that they're in an experience machine. It's the only theory that fit any of the facts established in the first season while also fitting the producers' claims that everything fits together, and they're not dead.
It neatly ties in why the baby doctor had to be poisoned before arriving on the island, and the events of last week's episode.
I shall be very surprised if it doesn't turn out to be either A) an experience machine or B)the writers have just been makin' stuff willy nilly since episode 3. With a strong bias toward (B).
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Spider-Man
Spider-Man
Puts a hyphen before the "Man"
Swings around, sometimes cries
Spells it better than those guys.
The article and the project bother me.
The Wired headline makes it sound like this is a sure-fire thing. Umm... DARPA sometimes makes stuff that will work on the battlefield, but lots of times their projects fail. That's the nature of their mission. "As early as three years" really means, "We hope it makes it into service in three years, but it'll likely be more like six, if at all."
As for the actual combat effectiveness of a system like this, it seems like it *might* be helfpul for one of those free-fire zone situations that the guys in the Pentagon drool about. But in a close combat situation, where civilians and combatants are mixed, where reading body language, determining intention, using the full range of your senses is vitally important, this could be an impediment to a soldier's ability to gauge the situation.
To me this is a typical example of the technology-fixated DoD establishment trying to fight some imaginary war of the future, rather than the wars we're fighing right now. Micro-drones for scouting city blocks and into structures nearly invisibly are a great idea, and I'm happy to see DARPA working on projects like that. Advanced translation technology is another great one. Better, faster medical technology - awesome. But I have serious doubts that this project will function properly in the field or provide any real utility to soldiers.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
"a soldier could be alerted to danger that his or her brain had sensed, but not yet had time to process."
and then he will process this information how?
People normally let their gaze wander all over, periodically acquiring a visual impression of their environment. We also have innate "orienting" behaviors where we quickly identify faces and particularly faces which are oriented towards us, and our attention immediately goes there, thus orienting our own faces towards the other. In a larger crowd/room, it is very likely that you will lock gazes with SOMEONE before too long. And if there is some reason you are not randomly looking around, such as because you are trying to test your sixth sense theory by staring intently at one person, then eventually the victim should notice your face during periodic sweeps and should look down your fixed line of sight...
This all sounds like the typical misperception of probabilities to me.
of course a more relevant issue in such a situation would be: why would one want/have to kill a 14 year old girl?
if one is lead to such a situation, isnt it much more plausible that the path one has followed is severely wrong?
This is obviously sarcasm referring to the many many deaths among civilians caused by "new" and "save" technology in the past years.
Its something all you slashdotters already know, about stairing at a woman's chest. She will always sense it. So I try not to. Or at least make it less obnoXious.
Doesn't it mean to shoot before thinking ? Isn't this happening enough already ?